HD For Indies

Hey all - I said I wouldn't say anything until I was sure, so I waited until it happened - today was the big multi-camera shootout, and it went very well.

Here's what we shot with:

Sony F900 to tape (1440x1080 8 bit compressed HDCAM) and uncompressed 1920x1080 10 bit 4:2:2 to disk
Panasonic Varicam to tape (960x720 8 bit compressed DVCPRO HD) and uncompressed 1280x720 10 bit 4:2:2 to disk
Sony HVR-Z1U to tape (1440x1080 8 bit MPEG-2). The plan was to shoot that to disk as well, but I was late getting my ducks in a row and didn't get the HD analog to HD-SDI converter in time
Canon XL2
Panasonic DVX100A

I figure these are the cameras most likely to be used by indies on a shoot. It would have been nice to have an SDX900 as well (DVCPRO50 SD camera), but so be it.

We had some snafus at first with the Varicam, the folks it had been rented out to before wacked out all the settings and it wasn't until an hour or two into shooting that we finally got it all figured out. Apparently, even after restoring to factory defaults (the "nuke & pave" option to fix these things), the default looks pretty desaturated. Apparently, "high color" is NOT the default factory setting, and it makes a HUGE difference. The colors looked very washed out as compared to the Sony F900 UNTIL it was set to high color, and then the results looked stunning.

We shot with some ugly furniture (dark matte brown fuzzy and orangish/reddish leather shiny), with some funky textured rugs in the background. This was basically all the ugly stuff in my house to torture shadow detail, highlight response, pattern detail capturing capabilities of the cameras. I had some brightly colored plates and bowls on a little table between them.

We shot some camera charts for basic reference, a focal chart and a MacBeth color chart.

We shot seated conversations wide/medium/close under regular studio lighting and low lighting in studio, we shot 24p and 60i/60p (only for sake of slowing it to 24p), we shot panning shots, we shot handheld, we shot outdoors on sticks and panning, we shot a whole buncha stuff.

It went very well and I'm amazed at how much talent, help, knowledge, and gear folks were willing to contribute.

Thanks very, very, VERY much to Ian, Jen, other Jen, Jennifer, John, Kirk, Robert, Blayne, Craig, Kevin, and anybody I missed (sorry, tired, 3 hours sleep and 12 hour day) for their time, help, gear, and patience with me.

So this week I'll capture all the footage and start comparing everything. LOTS to play with.

-mike

I've heard of'em, seen pictures of 'em, but never really seen how they work. So here it is - a video clip showing how the HVR-M10E Sony HDV deck works - the two stage flip down front panel, how tapes go in, battery powered (!), and inputs/outputs on the back. Simple but highly demonstrative.

Flash video, requires the plugin.

Sent in by N. Jeger. Thanks N!

-mike

OK, file this one under Way Out There, but something about this made my skin itch along the lines of "Can't this be useful somehow, somewhere?"

The link is to a site that described how a guy essentially broadcast a local TV show to his buddy across the country using iChat A/V and an s-video to FireWire converter box, in their case one called a Pyro. I have a similar device, the Sony DVCMC-DA2.

But the idea is to send an S-video or composite signal into the device that spits out a DV stream over FireWire, and then use that as the "camera" and "microphone" in iChat.

So if you burned a DVD of your day's shoot, or played the footage out over an S-video output from another (using video mirroring or somesuch) PowerBook (if you shot DVCPRO HD this would work great) and fed that into a Pyro or DVMC-DA2, you could stream that stuff easily to somebody else. Have a text chat going simultaneously, or an audio chat or cell phone conversation, and you could be sending them (heavily compressed) but a live feed from your dailies screening.

Of course, you could always compress the footage and FTP it, but that would take much longer to compress it. This is quick and dirty, but could be somewhat effective. Maybe. It would definitely be compressed all to hell.

But if you want to show somebody something in a hurry, a DVD player, s-video to DV FireWire adaptor and a laptop is a pretty cool piece of kit to have.

Like a said, crazy idea du jour...

-mike

Cyndi sent me this link to a video on her site of Jody Eldred, a 30 year veteran director of photography, talking about the new Sony HVR-Z1U. I had linked to Cyndi's page talking about Jody in the past, but here's actual video of him talking about it, and how he used it for a shot on JAG.

-mike

I didn't start keeping records I (as a non-web techie) could easily access until September 9th for this site, which coincidentally is when the little ads started showing up on the right hand side of the site. Since that time, it's been easy for me to check the number of pageviews I get per day. I called up the All Time listing the other day, and realized sometime last Thursday (Feb. 24th) I crossed over 500,000 pageviews since September 9th. Wow.

Thanks again to everyone who's read this site, and please keep recommending it to your friends and colleagues.

Thanks,

-mike

After accidentally stiring up a storm Friday, I need to clarify:

-on Thursday I suggested using Maxtor DiamondMax 10 drives with the Sonnet Tempo X 4+4 SATA cards.

-Friday I received a reader email saying that combination didn't work, and that they had discussed it with tech support

-Friday night I was contacted by Sonnet, saying that was by far not generally the case

-Friday & Saturday I received many reader reports, most saying it worked, some saying it didn't, some saying there were sporadic drive mounting difficulties - not all drives always showed up. (Sonnet has released a firmware patch to try to address that issue.)

So here's what I think now, based on evidence presented:

-I think that the drives typically work with Tempo X cards

-For most users, the card/drive combo seems to work just fine - witness Rob-Art at BareFeats.com's review of the Sonnet card using Maxline III and DiamondMax 10 drives, nary a problem reported

-For a very few users, they can't get the drives to mount at all - so far, one common trait seems to be a dual 2.5 GHz G5 with an NVidia 6800 Ultra card installed. One user with such a machine couldn't even get the DiamondMax 10 drives to mount EVEN ON THE INTERNAL SATA CONNECTOR, which to me says he either has bad drives, or something about his machine is just not acting right.

-So, apologies to Sonnet, while there are some issues out there, in general it appears that the DiamondMax drives DO work, and are NOT an absolute "no go." Based on some anecdotal evidence I have working with Maxline III and Seagate 7200.8 drives where I haven't had any mounting difficulties (nor have many others with the DM10's), perhaps the DM10 drives are slightly more likely to not always mount at startup under some circumstances that haven't been precisely defined yet, but I don't have hard evidence to support that. Or, perhaps certain card/drive/machine/OS and especially drive enclosures & cabling combos just have trouble, and since the DM10 drives are so popular, the problems occur more often there? There's no hard evidence that it's just the DM10's is what I'm trying to say.

If you have a Tempo X card and it's working OK, let me know, and tell me what Mac, what drives, what OS, what slot configuration and what cards you have installed.

Thanks,

-mike

OK, I should know better by now. If you go to a movie opening night, and there are no printed reviews, because the distributor held no press screenings, let that be a lesson to you: the studios know it's an awful movie and are hoping to get some opening weekend box office before poisonous word of mouth spreads.

Case in point: Wes Craven's new movie Cursed.

Simply put, it is.

From the outside: no press screenings, so no reviews. Even an article I read somewhere (MSN? NYTimes?) about how movies without press screenings are Known To Suck.

From the inside: Wow, this movie was bad. It was so bad it was kind of good in a way. Joanie Loves Chachi bad, LITERALLY. (Yes, Chachi (sp?) from Happy Days is in here. So is Craig Kilbourne (sp? been drinkin'). The acting is weak, the plot gets ludicrously bad at the end, but the Best of the Wurst has to be the editing, pacing, and "temp score as final mix" audio work. Sound effects are massively overplayed, scenes jump erratically in tone, and the score is just awful in its overtness. Plus, the movie just sucks balls, and I mean that in no positive way whatsoever.

Considering the fact that my favorite parts of the movie were The Jock Is Gay subtheme and the Joannie Loves Chachi theme (his agent's name is Joannie in the movie. Come ON!!!!), that's not leaving enough for the rest of the movie. I ADORE most everything else Christina Ricci has done, from The Adams Family to her more semi-recent stuff like Buffalo 66 and The Opposite of Sex. Then again, those are both 7 years old...then again, I haven't seen Monster yet.

Whatever. Cursed is cursed, it blows chunks, not even in a good Exorcist way.

My friend and I enjoyed it as a train wreck, not as a film.

Apparently, this is Cynical Week for me. I'm getting burnt out, gotta do some fun stuff, some creative stuff, work on my Lou Navien stories...

-mike

OK, I'll try to keep this in check -

Recently I've had several different interchanges with readers that didn't go well - people got upset that I wouldn't answer their questions for free, and I think it boils down to this:

-I'm already giving out a lot of free advice on this site

-If you want specific, detailed advice for your project or system, there are 3 ways I can help you:

1.) Read the blog. I've got over 500 postings in there. Use the Google search bar at the top of the page to search for keywords. Want a system recommendation? Every few months I publish my latest recommendations, the last was Dec. 31st, 2004. See the archives at top right of this page.

2.) If you don't find it in there, I invite you to ask, but please don't be offended if I say I'll answer on a consulting basis. To properly answer "What should I get?" leads into a long list of time consuming questions to narrow it down **. I answer all emails, perhaps not in as much detail as you'd like.

If I don't feel like answering it for free, I may offer to address your concerns on a consulting basis. $150/hr, one hour minimum. A surprising number (to me) of folks are balking at this, but look at it this way - a LOT can be covered on the phone in an hour. If you're looking to spend $8,000 to $20,000 or more on equipment, why are you so concerned about another $150 to get some independent, non-sales guy advice? What's your time worth? What's your time to research these issues worth? Do you really want to be an expert in SATA arrays, LCD panels, SATA cards, etc., or just get something that you trust is going to work? Everyone I've worked with on this basis has been pleased with the results.

** such questions as, in no particular order:
-do you want to do your own color correction?
-are you planning a traditional online session?
-what's your level of technical proficiency?
-how much footage do you plan on working with?
-do you want to work with uncompressed media?
-and if so 8 or 10 bit?
-and at what resolution?
-are you ever planning on 4:4:4 work?
-do you need fault tolerant storage?
-what's your budget?
-what's your risk tolerance?
-what do you plan to master to?
-do you ever plan on going out to film with this project? Realistically?
-what's your backup plan if RAID 0? Or are you comfortable without, realizing the consequences?
-will you have a deck the whole time or just at beginning and end of production?
-are you buying this for just this one project, or will you use the system on future work?
-what are your monitoring needs, and how color accurate does it have to be?
-color correction - is it for video or for going back out to film?

...and so forth and so on. Otherwise, BlackMagic DeckLink HD Pro card, Sonnet Tempo X 4+4 card , a dual 2.0 or 2.5 GHz G5, with 4 or more Maxtor Diamondmax 10 drives in whoever's case, striped & partitioned using SoftRAID, monitoring via a component SD studio monitor AND an HDLink attached to a 23" Apple LCD is a good general purpose solution. Does it work for everyone's needs? No. Is it overkill? Sometimes. Is it insufficient? Sometimes. Depends on the answers to the above questions.

3.) I will definitely give detailed advice for free, IF it offers me a chance to learn something I'm interested in. Doing a DI process on your HD film? Want to telecine uncompressed straight to disk? Want to shoot HD uncompressed to disk? Buying some storage stuff I haven't worked with before? Trying something new with HDV I don't know yet? Have some new performance data on something I'm interested in, and want to figure out how to squeeze maximum performance out of it? I'll be your new best friend in those cases, or any other that offers me a learning opportunity I'm interested in.

I'm more inclined to help if you have useful information to share with me. I'm less inclined to help if you want detailed recommendations on how to post your for-profit project, using HDCAM or DVCPRO HD, unless there's a new twist for me to learn. I've already addressed those on the blog numerous times, and it feels a bit inconsiderate to not take 20 minutes of your own time to research the site before asking me, a total stranger, to spend that much or more time solving your problems, for free.

But if you ARE using tips/techniques/recommended equipment from this site (or elsewhere) to do HDCAM/DVCPRO HD, let me know if it's working or not - THAT'S good useful feedback, and interests me in an ongoing conversation with you.

I've got so many things I'm trying to get done, I just don't have the time, energy, and inclination to help everyone solve all their problems.

A few people have actually gotten grumpy/nasty with me, and it's very frustrating - they're mad because I won't spend my time, for free, helping strangers on their for-profit endeavors. Those kinds of attitudes really make me disinclined to help in general. Especially when folks get ticked AFTER I've swapped 10 or more emails with them, spending time on "pre-consulting consulting" which frankly, is still consulting, folks, and pay or not, is still taking up my time.

So feel free to write in, I invite you to do so - when I get a bunch of requests for the same thing, I usually write up a review/report/summary on it for the blog. Just please don't get upset if I don't have the inclination to answer it all for free. We all have to make a living, or at least have the time to pursue one.

-mike

Got an email from Frederic, the Lumiere HD guy:

Lumiere HD released a new beta version, 1.5b10 which now allows MPEG2 TS encoding compatible with the Sony HDV devices.

Many are finding that AIC introduces too many compression artifacts. Especially when one considers you have to encode twice with it on top of the MPEG2 TS encoding.

You can now feed any 1440 X 1080 60i/50i mov (Uncompressed 10 bit, Photo Jpeg 100%, etc...) into Lumiere HD and it will encode the TS faster than any other encoder in my opinion. I know you wrote a blog about encoding speed. Give it a test. You can download the latest version from:

http://www.lumierehd.com/beta_download.php

You do need 1.2 installed on the machine for the beta to work.


Thanks for the update Frederic!

-mike

I might have linked to this in the past, not sure. Reader Ismail Shallis sent this in, a link to a series of articles on The Hollywood Reporter on Digital Intermediates.

-mike

So after figuring out that encoding back to MPEG-2 (native HDV format) from the Apple Intermediate Codec (AIC, what Apple converts HDV to when capturing from tape) is NOT a realtime process, the next natural question is how long does it take?

A quick poll of readers got this back:

Mac: dual 2.0 GHz G5
encoding time ratio: 6:1 (it takes 6 minutes to encode to HDV MPEG-2)

Mac: dual 1.25 GHz G4
encoding time ratio: 10:1 (10 minutes to encode one minute of AIC to HDV MPEG-2)

Mac: Mini 1.42 GHz
encoding time ratio: 15:1 (15 minutes to encode one minute of HD resolution AIC back to MPEG-2 for HDV layback)

A dual 2.5 GHz G5 might nudge that a little closer to 5:1, but it's clear that 1080i60 HDV footage takes a long time to cook. Important to remember when you're on deadline.

So if you're prepping a 30 minute piece, you'd need at LEAST 3 hours to get it to tape (on a dual 2.5 GHz G5, and maybe not even that fast), and as much as 8 hours (or more) if on a baseline config machine, like a Mac Mini. The absolute baseline is a 1 GHz G4, such as a 1GHz G4 PowerBook. I bet it could take as long as 10 hours or more on that Mac, with it's slower bus and slower drives on top of the slower processor speed. (But that's conjecture.)

Paul Stephan from Moviola emailed this to me, and asked that I share it with the readership:

Moviola invites you to attend a free event on March 3rd, from 6:30 to 8:30 pm, as we discuss the DVCPRO HD workflow, from conception to completion, using the Panasonic Varicam and Apple's Final Cut Pro HD system.

Since the introduction of the Panasonic AJ-HDC27F variable frame-rate camera, DVCPRO HD has become a preferred HD format for episodic and reality television, independent films, and music videos. Now with the introduction of the Final Cut HD upgrade for Final Cut Pro 4, Apple has made editing DVCPRO HD content easier and more flexible.

The simplified workflow and compatibility between Panasonic and Apple has opened the door to HD production and post-production to a whole new segment of filmmakers, cinematographers and editors.

Please join us for an informative and enjoyable evening as we present the HD DVCPRO Workflow Seminar. We will discuss the benefits of shooting with the Panasonic Varicam and help clarify the process of capturing, editing, and finishing with Apple's Final Cut Pro HD.

There is no fee, but seating is limited, so please call (323) 467-1116 or go to moviola.com and click on "HD Workflow" to register.

Moviola is located at:
1135 N. Mansfield
Hollywood, CA 90038

Free parking is available directly across the street from our main entrance.

To learn more about Moviola, or to view a map of our location, please visit us online at www.moviola.com


Sounds good, if you can, you should attend.

From Macintouch:

LaCie FireWire 800 Card Prevents HD Capture

Ed Waldrup
I bought Final Cut Express and iMovie HD (while waiting for Final Cut Pro) to allow capture of HD from Sony FX1. I could capture DV and get to the capture window in Express. With HD capture I got a message saying the tape is being cued, but got no further. The activity monitor indicated no data moving.

Lumiere HD capture worked fine. iMovie HD and Final Cut Express HD could only capture DV not HD.

However, prior to installing LaCie FireWire 800 card I could capture HD from the FX1 into iMovie. Removing the LaCie FireWire 800 card allowed both iMovie HD and Final Cut Express HD to capture HD from Sony FX1.

I have sent a note to LaCie and to Apple support. My experience is limited to G5 dual 2.5. LaCie FW 800 card in any slot with nothing attached to card. I want this card to work and expect LaCie/Apple to find a solution especially since the card was purchased from an Apple store.

If you're in the LA area, tomorrow night is all about HDV at the LAFCPUG meeting. Details in the link, starts at 6:45pm and runs late, but lots of good info.

-mike

Usually, when a new product is announced, I'll try to summarize the press release, then add some commentary as to why I think it's important or not. However Greeny over at the Phildelphia Final Cut Pro User Group website has done such a better job than I would have done, I'm going to just direct you over to the article on Silhouette Roto there.

The super short version - it's a multi-point rotoscoping tool for 8 or 16 bit, works inside Final Cut Pro HD and After Effects (a standalone version is coming as well), with good feathering controls, etc. Just go read the article and analysis if you think you might ever need some rotoscoping work done on a project of yours.

-mike

Updated - some hard numbers on time to convert AIC back to HDV. Scroll down to after the big bold section, look for "UPDATE:"

Tim Onosko who wrote in over the weekend to say that HDV worked on a Mac Mini followed up with an email that I interspersed comments into. Consider it a conversation of sorts. Tim's comments are in italics, mine in plain text:

On Feb 21, 2005, at 10:10 AM, Tim Onosko wrote:

Mike:

A little update following my amazement that a Mac mini could actually handle the job of cutting HDV.

In 1997, I was a beta tester for Radius's first Mac Firewire board, which, with a Radius plug-in for Premiere, let me (or anybody) edit DV format video on the Mac for the first time. HDV reminds me of those very early days, when everything needed to be rendered to disc (a similarly lengthy process) before playing out to tape. Fortunately, we now have hard disks bigger than the 4 gigabytes I had at my disposal, then. But otherwise, the workflow is similar.

Final Cut Express HD is quite good, and a comparative bargain. If you're just doing standard def DV/DVCam and HDV, it's 90% of the bang of FCP for less than a third of the retail price. Announcements at NAB may change everything, but I think a lot of people are going to be using this.


[this is Mike now]: That's the whole idea of FCE HD. For prosumers, it's great. The biggies missing are no batch capture, no 3 way color corrector, no formats other than DV & HDV. But like you said, that works for 90% of the people. And you can always walk it into an FCP suite.

What gets introduced into the editor's workflow with HDV is TIME. It takes 1.5 to 2 times of the running time of your raw footage to capture it to disc and transcode it to Apple Intermediate Codec (AIC). At the end, encoding it back to the MPEG TS HDV takes a stunning 15 to 17 times the final running time of the cut project. (All times reflective of the 1.42 GHz mini.) Obviously, the opportunity, here, is for someone to sell some hardware (like a Pinnacle or Matrox card) for desktop Macs that does nothing but encode and decode MPEG TS and the AIC. That should basically fix this workflow issue.

...or just get a faster Mac. I watched them demo on dual G5's at MWSF HDV being transcoded (inbound) in realtime. There's even a little indicator in the lower right hand corner to tell you that it's working in realtime at the moment. Outbound, re-encoding to MPEG-2, still takes time. The Apple rep flimflammed a bit and said that the MPEG-2 encoding "could be" realtime if you had a fast enough Mac....but that is just for the encoding of MPEG-2, not the laying back to tape. So with a dual 2.5 GHz G5, ingest is realtime, output takes at least twice as long as the footage lasts - 1X (or more) for encode, 1X for layback to tape.

Mike's Request to Readers: Please send in your iMovieHD and/or Final Cut Express HD capture and encode results! I'd like to know if capture is realtime on your computer (include model/speed, OS, RAM installed); and how long it took to encode your AIC footage back to MPEG-2. Stopwatch it and see, and tell me the details (again machine specs/OS/RAM, as well as how long the source was and how long it took to encode, and what format (720p, 1080i50, 1080i60). I'll publish the results.

UPDATE: - first report in, I gleaned this from some Macintouch coverage of iMovieHD - "a 30 second clip takes about 3 minutes on my dual 2GHz G5." So it's about 15:1 conversion time on a Mini, about 6:1 on a dual 2 gig G5. So this confirms that the Apple guy was flimflamming - it "could be" realtime if your machine was fast enough, but it'll be years before there's a Mac fast enough to encode in realtime with this algorithm. Certainly 720p30 footage from the JVC HDV cameras would encode faster than 1080i footage, since there are nearly twice as many pixels to process in 1080i as there are in 720p30.

So in theory, there might be a market for an accelerator product to do this in realtime. However, I don't think it'll happen for Macs. HDV is still a consumer level product, to make some dedicated hardware that can do a good job would be pricey. While it could speed things up 5 or 6 fold over a dual G5, it would be a very slim market to serve. It would have to be an internal card, not an external FireWire device, unless it only worked with the AIC codec (which is possible). Uncompressed 1440x1080 is still around 100 MB/sec, far beyond what you can realistically get out of a FireWire 800 port on a G5 in the real world. The only market would be a FireWire in (using AIC or other compressed codec the external device knew how to handle) to HDV compliant MPEG-2. I think it's too small a market requiring too much math, creating too expensive a device, solving too small a problem at this point. But hey, I'll gladly be wrong if somebody makes it.

I'd rather see a FireWire in, component video out box to convert DVCPRO HD (or better yet, Avid DNxHD) to component HD analog video.

I'd like to see Apple support DNxHD, but that would require both a codec and support of the RT effects pipeline to be meaningful, and I don't see that happening anytime soon for marketing and strategic reasons, even though it would be really nice to have (especially a 10 bit, full raster high quality HD codec!).

OK, back to topic, end of UPDATE.

Final Cut Express HD also offers a cool way to archive your HD project: As a Quicktime movie encoded with the AIC. In other words, a first-generation intermediate copy of your project. Now all we need is somebody with a service bureau to whom you can send a physical copy of these files and get an HDCam tape in return, to keep as your master.

I have shot and edited a couple little projects now with final running times of about five minutes each, cut down from 20 or 25 minutes of raw HDV footage. My estimate is that one of these consumes about 15 gigabytes of hard disk space, probably a little more overhead when you consider that the original HDV footage is cached before transcoding, and an HDV copy of the final cut is written disc before recording back out to tape. Not bad, though, actually. Well within the limits of a mini with an 80GB HDD.

HDV is only temporarily cached in a streaming fashion. Little temp files are created - only need as much to hold the buffer of unconverted HDV. Longer the shot, the more CPU lags in converting HDV to AIC, the bigger the buffer gets. So small on a dual G5, big on a Mini.


I've not seen much difference in quality between the original footage and the edited version re-encoded back to HDV. The Apple codec appears to be quite good, although haven't done any stress-testing with it. I've successfully cut sequences that I've then immediately transcoded (in the camera) to SD DVCam, then converted to a DVD. All a very smooth process. It certainly is nice to see something that works as advertised, and lives up to the hype.

Definitely need to stress test it, run it through the One River Codec Test Image and analyze it. Also, analyze some moving footage, since that's what really stresses the codec.


One final note about iDVD. The One-Step capture to DVD doesn't work so well. It doesn't burn a disc with the proper coding so that DVD players know it's 16:9, and (at least on the mini), it drops frames.

What specifically drops frames? Preview playback? While it's transcoding HD rez AIC to MPEG-2? I've heard that it can do 16:9 now, perhaps there's a setting or button to find to do it. Or perhaps One Step fails to flip that switch, so maybe you can manually push it at some point in the process?


As far as I'm concerned, anybody who shoots anything that has ANY future value is NUTS to shoot in DV/DVCam when this is as easy as it is. HD is frankly that only way to preserve the value of your work.

Well...in theory. In practice, the dynamic range on these cameras isn't the greatest, the price is still high, lenses are fixed, etc. There's also tons of form factors available for DV cameras, but only 3 HDV cameras out now. I'm surprised at how much mail I get about trying to find smallest, most consumer looking good camera because they need to do a guerilla shoot. (Sometimes literally - a bunch of guys were going into Nepal and didn't want to be perceived as news, they were lugging tons of decoy mountain climbing gear.) But the format definitely shows promise. I'm looking forward to the new Panasonic DVCPRO HD cameras to be announced at NAB that should be price & feature competitive with the Sony HDV cameras.

Feel free to pass along any (or none) of this to your readers.

- Tim


Yep.

-mike

Red Giant Software has announced the availability of Magic Bullet Suite v2.0.

New features include:
-HD handling included in price - no more HD premium cost
-dongle no longer required
-MisFire film damage plugins - 13 new plugins for scratches etc.
-23 more preset film looks
-Look Suite G5 optimization - up to 5 times faster than G4

Mike's Comments: MBS has been a popular tool to get a more film like looking result from video sourced projects. It used to have two versions, a standard definition (about $800) and an HD version (something like $2K I think). So the HD version was a bit of a reach for indies for a software plugin. But at one new price of $800, that makes it more affordable and accessible. Good timing with HDV etc. coming on line.

Both Magic Bullet 2.0 and Nattress' Film Effects 2.0 (see review from over the weekend, scroll down) will do 60i to 24p conversion, I should sit down and compare the results. Do they both just drop every fifth field to handle the timing difference, or have they grown in sophistication? I don't know yet.

-mike

This page includes a discussion amongst working DoP professionals concerning digital intermediates, 2K vs HD, what constitutes a "real" DI process, YUV vs RGB, stuff like that.

HDCAM SR is also discussed, with it's 4:2:2 and 4:4:4 modes, single vs dual data rate on the SRW-1, etc.

If you're thinking about doing a DI process on your film, this is good reading.

I think the most important thing that I got out of it was to ASK A LOT OF QUESTIONS from your DI vendor about EXACTLY how they plan to do the work, whether they acquire 4:4:4 at the beginning, and whether it stays in 4:4:4 all the way through production to the end.

-mike

Longtime contributor Martijn Schroevers has been messing around with different tools to get HDV footage working properly in Final Cut Pro HD. His latest report:

I did some HDV capture tests today. I used the new HDVxDV application, which is from the same guys that developed DVDxDV to regain footage from DVD's. The name HDVxDV is somewhat misleading, because you can capture and trancode to other formats than DV as well. First I used HDVxDV to capture the raw m2t stream from my FX1. This went very well, The first frames are scattered with green blocks(I'm betting this is because it was in the middle of a GOP (group of pictures - mike) but then everything is OK. No stuttering or freezing in the captured stream. I had many problems there with DVHScap, so that's a big win in this app. Then you can transcode the stuff in HDVxDV to several other formats in QuickTime. First I converted to 10bit uncompressed, and this works well. The files can be opened in FCP and played via my Blackmagic HDpro card. Image format, field order etc. are done properly. The files get very big though at 130 MB/sec and can only be played with RAID storage. Transcoding is not done realtime. On my 2x2Ghz G5 it took 3 minutes to transcode 1 minute of footage. A nice feature is you can batch-encode more than one clip. I also did a transcode in MPEG Streamclip, a free utility that will convert all sorts of MPEG to all QuickTime codecs you have in your Library. The latest version has batch processing as well. I converted to 10 bit uncompressed, to see if there was any difference with the HDVxDV transcoded footage. There was none. The same whopping 130Mb/sec filesize, the same image quality. Then I did a transcode to Apple Intermediate Codec. This is the way to go. Image quality is about the same as 10bit uncompressed, but the files are only 8 to 11MB/sec. You can set the framesize to 1920x1080 from the start, so no problems with 16/9 flagging or else. FCP will play the files via the Blackmagic HDpro card in full HD. I have no experience with oher source codecs like HDCAM, but for HDV the Intermediate codec looks good enough. I tried to do the same HDV to Apple Intermediate Codec conversion in HDVxDV, but this footage would drop frames in FCP. For now my workflow will be: capture in HDVxDV, then convert to Apple Intermediate Codec in MPEG Streamclip. Edit in FCP 4.5. I use HDVxDV only for capturing. Because this is a demo version it burns a watermark in the transcoded shots, but not in the captured m2t stream. The program costs $ 80. A high price for a utility that still has hick-ups and will become obsolete for most users when FCP5 ships. Another shortcoming of HDVxDV is that it will not transcode back to HDV or dump to tape on my FX1. For that i still need iMovie. My demo version of HDVxDV will run for free another 30 days. I hope FCP5 will be round the corner by then, or a copy of Final Cut Express in the meantime.


Some questions based on what he said:
1.) When converting to AIC, is it a 1440x1080 or 1920x1080 file? It should probably be 1440x1080.
2.) Won't play realtime - was playback quality set to high?
3.) Is all this hassle worth it, or should you just use LumiereHD and iMovie's function to re-encode back to tape?
4.) A definite issue when working with 1080i HDV footage that you want to master to a 1920x1080 format - how to scale it up to 1920x1080 from 1440x1080 and still maintain high quality, and not rely on the very mediocre QuickTime scaling algorithm.

-mike

Woops - here's another press release reprinting:

Nattress updates Film Effects for Apple's Final Cut Pro

Ottawa, Canada, 20, February 2005. Nattress releases Film Effects V2.0, a new update to the popular plugin package for Apple's Final Cut Pro. Film Effects gives the user an immense amount of control over how their video looks, and the ability to make it look like film. Film Effects is based around a high quality 60i to 24p simulation plugin and also includes over 20 preset looks, each totally configurable and 8 other plugins that help make your video more filmic.

Included in the package is a plugin, G Nicer, which can vastly increase the quality of the chroma in DV NTSC video by use of a proprietary chroma reconstruction algorithm.

Film Effects has been used on many diverse projects including:

Mary Poppins 40th Aniversary Edition: "A Musical Journey" extra (http://www.apple.com/pro/video/perkins/)
Doctor Who: The Leisure Hive: "Synthesizing Starfields" extra
Ween Live in Chicago
Anthrax, Music Of Mass Destruction
Recon 2020

Film Effects V2.0 Includes:

24p Simulation now allows for variable motion blur
G Film Extra and G RGB Colour Mixer - a whole new Film Effect that combines the newly improved 24p effect with a new method of altering video to look like film
G Nicer features an entirely new algorithm that vastly improves the creation of 4:4:4 from NTSC DV's 4:1:1 chroma
G Widescreen Matte Filter for improved letterboxing of 4:3 video
New Presets
Bleach Bypass effect greatly improved
new G Chroma Blur plugin
G Vignette has many new improvements and features including custom shapes and dithering options
and many more new features and improvements!

Reviews:
Nigel Cooper of DVUser.co.uk reviews Film Effects

Industry expert Ned Soltz reviews Film Effects for the LAFCPUG


Film Effects V2.0 is now available for sale at $100US from www.nattress.com.

Here's your Sunday morning tidbits:

CGM DVE Complete is "a collection of 136 filters, transitions, and generators" for Final Cut.

iMovieHD review from MacWorld.

iDVD5 review - only HD relevant because you might want to make a quickie 16:9 standard definition DVD. From MacWorld.

GarageBand2 review - hey - just for fun!

iPhoto 5 review - from MacWorld - well, if you bought iLife, you're gonna be using this...I like the new RAW support and improved image manipulation capabilities, and I'm looking forward to making a book with the nice templates

HDVxDV - a small simple application to import HDV from camera and convert to a codec of choice. Haven't played with it, perhaps this may fix our iMovieHD woes? Somebody played with this yet? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?....

Fearless Tools - a bunch of executable scripts etc. to do various potent things to your Final Cut setup, of the Do Not Push Big Red Button Unless You Really, Really Mean It variety. But also some nice logging templates and other stuff.

Latest version of NetNewsWire, my favorite RSS reader/browser application.

Below aren't so much news as review, or furthering your education:

Display Technologies, Parts I-IV - OK, put your propeller beanie on for this one. A VERY in depth look at various display technologies for consumer HDTV viewing. I'm reading this stuff now, planning my first HDTV purchase...

State of the Industry: HDTV - another ExtremeTech article, this one on state of the industry. From Dec 1, 2004, so not too horribly dated.

Extreme Tech's HDTV Buyer's Guide - this is from Deb 6, 2004. Again, not too dated....yet.

I dug around in some posts and cleaned out all the curly quotes and other non-HTML happy characters, and I think that's what the problem was with the RSS feed - it was getting thrown off. Lesson learned - no more copy & paste from word docs, reader reports need to be in plain old, HTML friendly text from now on! My bad. So enjoy all the new stuff that just came rushing down the pipe.

Eww, toilet metaphor...what's that imply about what I'm writing?

; )

-mike

After I posted Nicholas Kay's X-Serve RAID results, Graeme Nattress wrote in to point out he was getting better results:

Hi Mike,

With stock apple fibre card, and Xserve RAID 3.5TB formatted RAID50, I get 300MBs read and 200MBs write using the BMD disk tester. I don't have the XSRaid journalled though - I don't think it's a good idea to journal it. Perhaps the journalling would be why your friend was getting slower than usual speeds. With the cinewave speed tester, I get about 360MBs read and correspondingly higher write too.

Graeme


I then asked for his system config to make sure that this was a fair apples to apples comparison -

Hi Mike,

Dual G5 2ghz.
Current stock apple fibre card, using copper fibre cables that come with the XSR.
Xserve RAID 3.5TB, fully populated with 14 drives. Each RAID controller is RAID5. Full cache - what's that - 512MB per controller??
Pre-read stripes are default, 8 stripes, 512k per disk.
Fibre settings are automatic, which is 2Gbs.
Battery backed up cache option too.
In the Apple disk utility, I have the two halves of the XSR striped RAID5, so the whole drive is a RAID50. Jounalling is off.

298.5MBs read, 192.4MBs write, using BMD test.

Print those results if you want. That's fine by me.

I'm using it with a BMD Decklink HD Pro + HDLink to Apple 23" display, as per the article I wrote.

I've tried changing the fibre settings and pre-read stripes, but everything I did either didn't change much, or slowed things down.

Yes, for media drives I don't think journalling is a good idea. I think it's best to speak to the hardware raid direct and not put any further abstraction in the way. The raid controllers are looking after redundancy and data security, so I don't think it makes sense to fight that on the host machine side. I'd certainly try and put the word out for a definate answer on that though, as that's just my guess.

Graeme


Mike's Comments: Hmm. If disabling journalling buys some extra speed, is it worth it? If it crosses over some mission critical threshold (lets you reliably work with some media throughput that you need that you can't with Journalling on), then it might be a good idea. I'm a little queasy about disabling journalling, it helps prevent directory damage in the event of a crash is my understanding. I can see how added overhead would make it run slower, but does the X-Serve RAID really handle the same issues journalling does? I don't know. I'm not saying Graeme is wrong or right, nor that I know what I'm talking about here, it's just a question I'd want a very solid answer to before I committed a lot of unique data to the array.

Any Unix geek/RAID fanatic have some solid answers on this one? Write me and let me know if you KNOW at mike[at]hdforindies[dot]com.

-mike

I'm trying to figure out why, apologies...RSS hasn't updated for several days in NetNewsWire, which is the predominantly used newsreader. It may be due to XML illegal characters used when copying and pasting Word document content into my posts. Argh. More technical mumbo jumbo...

-mike

I try not to just blankly post press releases sent to me, but this sounded interesting. 8.4 in HD monitor. But it costs nearly as much as the HDR-FX1 all by itself. But battery powered, and list price just under $3K. So no stamp of approval, just letting you know this is out there:

---------PRESS RELEASE BELOW-------------------

ERG Ventures Introduces the New HDM-EV85
Portable HD Monitor for SONY® HDV Camcorders.

Affordability, High Resolution and Superb Color Accuracy
From the Award-Winning ERG Ventures

IRVINE, CA (February 1, 2005) - HDV camcorder users will soon enjoy the award-winning ERG HD monitor's color accuracy and high resolution image. ERG Ventures has introduced the HDM-EV85 8.4-inch monitor, specifically designed for the revolutionary HDV camcorder, SONY® HVR-Z1U and HDR-FX1. The 8.4-inch monitor's high resolution will relieve HDV users from using a small on-board LCD monitor to view high quality HD contents.
The HDM-EV85 offers enhanced color, frame markers and a convenient memory preset function. More importantly, its HD analog input enables SONY's HDV camcorder to connect to the HDM-EV85 directly. This affordable monitor will accept most popular video image formats; 1080i, 1080psf and 720p. In addition, the HDM-EV85 power unit is compatible with the HDV camcorder's 7.2V battery. The monitor, with two 7.2V batteries lasts for two and half to three hours.
"We are very excited to offer our new HDM-EV85 HD monitor to HDV users," said Mr. Mitsutaka Yoshida, President and CEO of ERG Ventures. "The new HDV camcorder will definitely expand HD's horizons, ensuring that users will enjoy this next generation technology."
- More -
The HDM-EV85 is the most affordable HD monitor, among ERG HD monitors, and will contribute to a new level of HD video production. At ERG, we take pride in offering the finest high-resolution products. It is our mission to serve all the industry professionals in the HD field."
The HDM-EV85 display panel has a resolution of 1,024 x 768 pixels, and its 8.4-inch LCD screen will enable HDV camcorder users to precisely focus the shooting image and check the image angle with various marker functions, such as a 16:9 frame marker. Also, the HDM-EV85's clarity and image quality can be used as a quality control monitor.
Other advantages of the HDM-EV85 include: an active LCD area that displays 16.77 million colors by having 8 bits per RGB; each LCD is shipped only after color adjustment optimization to reduce the incompatibility between CRT and LCD monitors; Color Temperature controls (6500K and 9300K); an Aspect Ratio function that correctly displays the originally recorded image; a Gamma Adjustment function which correctly lightens the image to help facilitate the monitoring process; a180 degree rotatable display; an SD analog composite input, a large-size tally signal light, and a SONY®12V-battery mount are available as options.
The HDM-EV85 will be demonstrated at the National Association of Broadcasters trade show (NAB), April 16-21, 2005 in Las Vegas at booth SU10134.

Price/Availability
Measuring just 8.3" (W) x 2.55" (D) x 6.96" (H) and weighing only 3.7lbs. The HDM-EV85 will be available in March. Manufacturer suggested retail price (MSRP) is $2,980 USD. Sun carrying case and angle support stand will be coming later this year. Contact contact@erg-ventures.com.


About ERG Ventures
ERG Ventures Co., Ltd. is a Tokyo, Japan-based company that has produced the finest in high-resolution products since 1988. The ERG North America Marketing Office in Irvine, Calif., is supervising all the sales and marketing activity in the U.S. They are responsible for the distribution of video equipment and video editing equipment and they remain one of the leading consultants for video systems in Japan. Among the many products available from ERG Ventures Co., Ltd. are: HDM-EV80D; HDM-EV30D; HDM-EV35D; HD View Finding System; Fiber Optic HDTV Transport System; Valise Pro Multi-Base Unit; Time Lag Adjuster (EDS-5310); and Time Lag Tester (TT-803). For more information on ERG, visit www.erg-ventures.com or contact ERG North America Marketing Office, 949-263-1630.

Reader Ben Howard wrote in to say:

Saw your question on your site and thought I'd contribute my 2-cents...

...I've been hired by Panasonic to demo FCP and 24P stuff for them a couple of times. I saw an early version of the P2 camera and held (in my hand) a 4GB memory card. It is a PCMCIA form factor, however, several of the sales and product management types repeatedly said (to the trade show attendees no less) that it was based on SD technology...they claimed Panasonic was one of the inventors of the SD card...they also stated that at release it'll have 8-9GB capacity when released and that within a few years, they expect to be mass-producing 256GB & 1TB cards..."mass-produce" was emphasized in such a way as to make me think they've actually manufactured chips with that capacity, just not in acceptable yields...I will say this, that camera was damn light...almost too light...

Don't know if that's helpful...

and then later wrote:

...one thing I forgot earlier was that they said the PCMCIA card had 4 SD chips arrayed together on the card...hardware raid type thingy I guess, so it appears to equipment and computers as one unit...they also mentioned how it'll probably be further grouped together in a Raid-0 or Raid-5 type configuration when finally deployed...imagine 6 PCMCIA cards in a purpose-built caddy or brick that can be slotted into the camera or field back-up unit(glorified firewire enclosure?) or studio deck...

using a field back up unit, imagine going out with 2 P2 bricks and a large FW drive (I'd hope for a RAID-1 type device myself-give the sense of security that a single drive failure won't completely f**k me) to do all the shooting, come back into edit suite and hook up drive and begin cutting immed...

-thanks Ben!

-mike

After I wrote about the Boxx solutions, I got an email from Hop Litzwire about the Leitch HD offerings. I saw the Leitch system at NAB 2004, but my reaction at the time was that it felt too marginal at the time to seriously consider. Here's what he had to say about it:

I think if you want to fully rig your system up, with like 2.4 TB of storage and the 3D-DVE options, it's somewhere around $40k (or $17k for just the board and BOB, and the rest you build yourself - the self-build option is why I orginally got a VelocityQ over another Avid) which is probably more expensive than FCPHD solutions, but A LOT less than Avid's uncompressed HD solutions. However, to get 2 streams of 10-bit uncompressed HD with plenty of real-time effects and the ability to mix all resolutions, you'd have to beef up an FCP system to the point where it would end up being $40k I bet, but it still as yet wouldn't be able to mix resolutions, formats, and compressions rates without rendering. Anyway - just like with my VelocityQ, the VHD works in conjunction with Digital Fusion by allowing you to select a range of clips on your timeline, right-clicking on them and selecting "Send Range to DF." The range of clips will open in DF in the correct order of chronology with the necessary loaders placed, and if you had dissolves between clips it will add those too (I don't think it will add more specific effects from Velocity, but if you're doing a big composite in DF you should add those in DF anyway IMO). As you know, all of this is a good way to minimize the generational build-up of the original clips, as opposed to exporting from the NLE, working in DF, then exporting from DF. You can also set up another machine as a DF render machine (with the one render node they give you), and render your DF composites on that while you get back to work on your editing.

Another thing that I think is wild: I've always been able to multi-cam 4 cams in my VelocityQ, but in VelocityHD you can multi-cam 8! SD cams, and 2 HD cams.

For a video on all this stuff, check out what I just found:

http://www2.leitch.com/custserv/products.nsf/wp/VelocityHDStreamHiEng


Like I've said, $40K is nothing to sneeze at, but to compare, Matrox is coming out with a solution called Axio that is supposed to have similar specs as the VelocityHD, but I hear it will be a turnkey-only selling for almost $50k. From what I'm seeing written by my colleagues on the Leicth/Velocity Yahoo group, there are going to be a bunch of VelocityQ's for sale on ebay very soon, as a number of the members who have the means or the managerial blesssing seem to be dumping their VQ's for VHD's. Wish I could, but I've only had my Q for a couple of years and I'm not in the market quite yet. Maybe someday soon.

I would say that to find out more, don't get too stuck around the beautiful and mystical confines of the Apple booth at NAB too long that you don't slide by the Leitch booth and check out the VHD. I'm told they are still smoothing out some of the "cool tools" as they call them, so that all the extra things you're able to do with VelocityQ (such as using the After Effects and Photoshop plug-ins that allow you to see your AE and PS work on your monitor and render out to the dps files, etc., and do the same with 3DSMax) will be true for the VelocityHD. The last thing I'll say is - and this has been the case with Velocity from the beginning - the interface is certainly not the "Purdy-est" one out there, and I've been on them about it since I've had it (although they did change the backround color, by my own proddings believe it or not), but despite it being cosmetically challenged, it can do just about everythingn you could imagine and more once you learn how to use it.

Hop Litzwire

The more I read, the less I like 10.3.8. See Macintouch's page on the subject.

I don't see enough benefits to justify the effort.

10.3.6 or 10.3.7 fixed my Safari issues. 10.3.5 I think brought them on, or was that 10.3.6? 10.3.6 is required for iLife 05 in order to work with the Apple Intermediate Codec to work with HDV. So 10.3.6 is the highest version I'd recommend running, unless you find something that you need that doesn't work in 10.3.6. Harrumph. It'll take us until 10.4.3 I bet before we have stuff working smoothly again...

Reader Tim Onosko wrote in after messing around with Final Cut Express HD on the minimal hardware - a Mac Mini. Here's what he found out:

Mike:

A little progress report on my own experiments with HDV and Final Cut Express HD.

I have been highly skeptical of the whole HDV thing from the start, having been unimpressed with the JVC camera. But then an afternoon with the Sony camera (the FX1, the consumer version) convinced me to take a chance on the Z1U, the "pro" version of the camera, for use in a future project. I figured that it would at least be a good way to "go to school" on HD. And so far, I have been correct.

Likewise, I was skeptical of Apple's claims that you could capture, edit and output a project, based on the minimum requirements as stated on their page for FCE HD. So I put it to the test, using a Mac mini with an 80GB disk drive and 1GB of RAM. I have only performed the most rudimentary of tests, capturing a few shots, trimming and rearranging them on the timeline, adding some transitions and superimposing some text. The process is quite asymetric. Capturing several minutes (about 8 minutes) of HDV footage to the drive end transcoding to the Apple Intermediate Codec took around 13 or 14 minutes. But re-encoding a little less than two minutes back to HDV/MPEG2 took over 22 minutes.

But guess what? It worked! I am flabbergasted that it can all be done with so little horsepower, on an entry-level machine. Amazing.

Making progress one step at a time.



Thanks Tim!

-mike

So much has been going on I haven't had time to make individual posts for a bunch of interesting things going on lately, so I'm just going to dump them in here in no particular order:

Most interesting of the bunch: Steve Shaw of Digital Praxis has posted this highly detailed report of how they shot a feature in Lithuania with the latest digital tools - Viper, S.Two, LTO2 backups, etc. Interested in how digital cinematography is evolving? This is the most spot-on, up to date digital cinematography production I've heard of so far.

Most useful of the bunch: various documents useful for moviemaking - script templates, call sheets, editing logs, storyboard templates, contracts, etc. This is a GREAT resource for those making their own movies.

Automatic Duck ships Pro Import PPro, a software tool to let you import Avid or Final Cut Pro timelines into Adobe's Premiere Pro, keeping cuts, layers, etc. intact.

Wide Angle Adaptor available for Sony HDV cameras.

Hollywood Calculator is a fun little app that helps figure out how meet feet of film for a given time, how much disk space video takes up, stuff like that. Mac app.

DVX100A: What's the real difference between shooting 4:3 and 16:9 modes?

Interview with David Mullen, cinematographer, talking about all sort of stuff, including film vs HD.

Like the new PowerBooks? Like that two finger scrolling idea? Have an older PowerBook and jealous? Don't be - here's a hack to give two finger scrolling to older 'Books.

And dessert - a sweet little animated movie

I got a bunch of these links from Digital Producer, News of the Dead (nice site Wiley!), and other sites.

UPDATED: More comments/analysis added below

Think Secret is reporting that Final Cut Pro 5 will be revealed at NAB in a couple of months. I saw the headlne and thought to myself "I already knew that. With HDV, IMX, and 1080i50 DVCPRO HD support, what are you going to tell me I DIDN'T know?"

Apparently, a LOT. Read the article for all the details.

Here's the biggies:

-it's not shipping at NAB
-It requires/relies on QuickTime 7 and Tiger
-LOTS of Core Video integration, meaning more/better realtime blurs, effects, etc. (perhaps even better RT compositing as well)
-more audio tracks (rumored)
-multicam support (rumored)
-other Pro Apps improved or brand new
-Motion to get Core Video stuff as well

Mike's Comments/Analysis:

OK, first off, this is from a rumor site, so who knows if it's true. Actually, I take the potential delay as a good sign - based on rumors I'd heard, I expected Final Cut Pro 5 to be a minor update supporting new features with other features like better fiber channel integration, but honestly I'd expected Core Video stuff to get wrapped into the next version. With the benefits of QuickTime 7 and Tiger due over the summer, and an expected spring release date for FCP 5, Core Video, Spotlight, etc. wouldn't be integrated until next year at NAB. Apple's more on the ball than I expected if this comes to pass.

If this is true, that means we're on our own until this summer in terms of HDV & AIC support in Final Cut Pro HD. Final Cut Express HD has shipped and is available, but doesn't have all the goodies of Final Cut Pro. I'd expect FCP5 to import FCE HD projects, though.

In light of the fact that Apple announced June 6 as the start day of their World Wide Developer's Conference (WWDC), I'm betting they release Tiger (OS X 10.4) at or right before the beginning of the WWDC, so the developers can learn all about it. Why have the WWDC and NOT have the new OS ready? That'd be silly. Unless it was almost ready and developers would be to play with a very late beta. But in general, it would make the most sense to have it available at WWDC. So why schedule WWDC for before the OS is ready? I say OS X should be out right around my birthday - June 4th. Happy Birthday to me!

-So I'm also betting that FCP 5 won't ship until after my birthday - if it depends on QT7 & Tiger, it's not releasable until those are out. So sometime in June for FCP 5 at the earliest.

-this also sounds like FCP 5 will be a big release in terms of more power under the hood. Great!

-Core Image & Core Video - which I've written about here and here extensively in the past, which means that the OpenGL card's GPU (graphics processing unit) and the CPU (central processing unit such as G5) work together to do lots of very impressive realtime effects, color correction, blurs, etc. This'll mean a LARGE increase in what you can do in real time. Maybe, possibly, mixing codecs and/or frame sizes on the same timeline.

-at least one brand new Pro Video app, and updates to others. Exciting!

-mike

So John Nagle came over again yesterday, and I installed a Kona2 card in the dual processor G5 instead of the BlackMagic Decklink HD Pro that had been in it last week, and applied some knowledge I got from the AJA rep on how precisely to set up the litle HD10A box (it's an HD analog component to HD-SDI converter), and it worked!

We were able to successfully capture 10 bit uncompressed 1080i60 video to disk at about 160 MB/sec.

Some notes:

-I don't know whether the BlackMagic card can or can't do this as well, in our first try on Friday I couldn't get it to work, but I changed DIP switch settings on the HD10A as well, so the BMD card might have worked, just don't know.

-We were able to capture to whatever we wanted, but we chose 10 bit just to get best possible results. John suggested that we capture 8 bit since the sensors are 8 bit, I said the MPEG-2 is 8 bit, I don't know what the sensors sensitivity is, but even if it were 8 bit, we'd want to oversample since we'd gone from digital CCDs to analog output to digital input. If something's gone through an analog conversion, you need to oversample upon requantizing (when digitizing) to even attempt to get close to original results.

-we wanted to test 50i to 25p to 24p, but the HD10A only does 59.94 or 60fps, not 50i, so we weren't able to test that. Subtle things make a difference, NEVER assume "Sure, it'll work!" until you do it yourself or speak to someone who's done EXACTLY what you're trying and did it successfully. And if they're a company rep, squint at'em to be sure.

-we viewed the footage on an Apple 23" LCD running through a BlackMagic Design's HDLink, a box that converts HD-SDI to DVI. So when we played back directly from the analog outputs from the camera, the signal was running from analog component to HD-SDI to DVI to the Apple panel. Whew! A long route and a lot of cables and boxes.

-after capture, I converted some of the footage to DVCPRO HD (which is 1280x1080 natively) just to see how it would look. I'm ASSUMING this would look the same as if I had captured directly to DVCPRO HD in the first place. It has some scaling issues when viewed back out of the Kona2 card, since it's doing a realtime stretch from 1280 to 1920, and also probably because the Recompress To function in Media Manager is relying on QuickTime's crappy scaling math. Processing through a better scaling algorithm would probably have been a good idea.

-playing back the footage from the camera, the scaling was smooth - 1080i HDV is a 1440x1080 signal, and is scaled up to 1920x1080 on playback. The camera's built in scaling does a nice job.

-we were looking at footage we'd just shot of a car parked across the street, studying the smoothness of the roundness of the aluminum rims on the car. Playback from camera was smooth, playback from uncompressed capture was smooth, playback from converted MPEG-2 footage via LumiereHD (which was still 1440x1080) was a bit chunky, as was DVCPRO HD.

So if you're going to work with HDV footage in other codecs, you'd want to find some algorithm to generate smooth scaling results.

I need to do some careful tests to check for bad scaling with the hardware from AJA and BlackMagic to map out a best possible solution. The difference, once you saw it, was SUBSTANTIAL between badly scaled footage (QuickTime scaling) playing back through the BMD or AJA hardware with their realtime scaling to get from 1280 or 1440 up to 1920. Drat, a whole other level of testing to be done....the more I get into all this stuff, the more stuff I find needs to be analyzed hyper critically. I seriously could use a lab of students to help me with this stuff. Hmm...

-after seeing the scaling issues for capture, post-capture conversion, and playback, the idea of 50i to 25p to 24p will require a lot of careful handholding for best results. Compression Master doesn't support DVCPRO HD export at this time. Cleaner seems to mess up luminance levels when dealing with YUV footage, but I need to play with it more to lock down the specific behavior. After Effects works, but requires lots of manual effort, even when you're slick with your drag & drop and menu commands. So I still don't have a happy solution yet.

-more careful testing to do - if I capture direct to DVCPRO HD in the first place, do I get that funk scaling or not? Could I live with it, edit with it, kick out an uncompressed DM (Digital Master) at 1280x1080, then use a high quality scaling algorithm to stretch it up to 1920x1080, and then output THAT to tape? Sheesh....lots of little subtle issues to be resolved.

-we also eyeballed some shots of F900 that I'd done a couple of months ago to stuff we shot then and there with the Z1. John was pretty proud of the output of the Z1, I liked the smoother, higher res output of the F900, and it's greater exposure lattitude.

-But uncompressed to disk works. The next step is to look into the difference between the compressed and uncompressed footage and decide whether the hassle is worth it, under what circumstances.

-mike

I've been emailing with a student at NYU named Nicholas Kay for some months now, talking about how to record the uncompressed output from a Sony F950 HD camera directly to disk, skipping tape. The F950 is the Sony F900's big brother, in that it can shoot and output 10 bit 4:4:4 RGB as well as the 10 bit 4:2:2 YUV that the F900 only does. The traditional answer for recording the F950's output has been to record to HDCAM SR on either the massive 68 pound SRW-5000 studio deck with the RGB cards, which costs about $100,000, or to record on the newer SRW-1 field recorder, which costs about $50,000, but requires the $30,000 SRPC-1 to go with it.

Nicholas' goal was to have a low cost solution to record footage directly to disk, which is where you want your footage to end up, anyway. Tape has the advantages of relatively low media cost, small form factor, and a certain amount of fault tolerance/error correction. But if the deck is $80,000 to $100,000, that can moot other advantages.

Nicholas' thinking was along the lines of what I've been working on - a direct to disk uncompressed solution that allow you to skip tape altogether. Your media costs are higher (drives), but your capture device costs are so much lower it makes it worthwhile. Obviously, a 55 pound computer and 110 pound array are not easy things to lug around, and the fans (especially on the RAID) can be far too noisy to keep anywhere close to a microphone on set. I'm working on a different approach to solve those and some other problems, but Nicholas has come up with a great solution to solve a lot of his problems.

Below is his report. Usually I put reader input in italics, but that would be a pain to read, so here it is in plainfaced type:

-----------------------------------

02/12/05
Sony F950 direct disc capture to Apple 3.5 Xraid
By Nicholas Kay

This article will be covering capturing 10 bit RGB 4:4:4 1080p 23.98 video from the Sony F950 dual link 4:4:4 Cinealta, via Blackmagic Decklink Pro dual link to 3.5TB Xserve RAID. Direct capture from the camera to disc with playback was successful, so we can leave the suspense at the door.

I'm a film student at NYU, and I'm doing a short that I mean to be the most technically advanced student film done to date. The film "The Girl from Serrano" will feature full 3D environments, with 2D live action sequences at 10 bit 4:4:4 spec(2k next year). What will make this film the most advanced student film to date, is that it will be the world's first "all-digital" film. Its life will fully reside on hard-disc, until it is projected, which means that there will be no tape medium used through out the process, and will be completed at a ground-breaking low cost.

I had been relaying messages to Mike for the past couple months about different possibilities for direct to disc capture of 10bit 4:4:4, and in the end I got the Xserve Raid 3.5 TB disc array, with the apple fiber channel. Mainly because I felt this would be the safest/cheapest answer for my footage.

Immediately when using this configuration on my Dual 2.5 desktop w/ 4gig of RAM, I noticed that the maximum read and write speed this disc array could handle with both channels striped was just under 200Mb/sec at RAID 50 or RAID 0. I tested the channels singly as well and was able to get up to 139 mb/s, but cumulatively not over 200 which is not safe enough for 4:4:4 capture (Mike's note: 10 bit 4:4:4 1080p24 is about 190 MB/sec, the usual rule of thumb is to have at LEAST 20% overhead, so about 230+MB/sec). I figured that the discs were probably fast enough, so there might be a bottleneck in-between the disc array and the computer. So I did some research and found the ATTO Celerity line of fiber channel products and I got the 22XH model. After doing this I proceeded to find out just what the Xraid could actually do. The results aren't a world better, but they do allow for some wiggle room.

First off, the fastest Write speeds that the Xraid can do with the ATTO Celerity card is at RAID 0, which comes across consistently at 236mb/s, all the way to the last 90gigs of space left on the hard drive. What this says is that the hard drives are plenty fast, but are being regulated by the fault tolerant controller, and so this is the max you can expect from probably any Xserve RAID unless they come out with a new controller.

But secondly, the READ speeds of the array also flew up, going to 280 mb/s, also across the board to the last 90 gigs of space left of the disc. What is so interesting about this spec is that it didn't only get this speed at RAID 0, but at every striped configuration (50,30,0+1). Now this is something! While capture is only feasible at RAID 0 for 4:4:4 1080p 24fps, it is a solution for working on footage after it is captured, with data protection, for less money. This is important for me, and others working on "post-heavy" productions.

These benchmarks were derived from the Black Magic Disc Speed Utility, which brings up a note with other "free ware" versions as well. I like the Black Magic Utility because they simulate a real data transfer with a 5GB file package, and write it, then read it from the disc. The main thing to be sure of is the file packet size, other utilities like Xbench use 200mb file packets, which for disc arrays would really just be able to test a burst speed of the discs and nothing more. Also some programs don't take into account memory caching for individual drives, ect. So Black Magic was the way I went.

And yes capture was done with the Sony F950, dual link (4:4:4). The test was performed with the good people at Plus 8 Digital in NYC, where we just plugged in the dual channels of the camera to my Black magic Pro (dual link) capture card, set the frame rate to1080p 23.98 fps. , and viola! No second tries, no tri-level sync, just straight, flawless direct capture and playback. We had all the equipment we might need at our disposal, including an HD sync, and the SRW 4:4:4 deck, but none of it was needed.

So here's a quick re-cap

XRAID w/APPLE FC

Dual 2.5 G5 (4gigs of RAM) OSX 10.3.7

Black Magic Pro (dual link) capture card-in slot 3

Apple Fibre Channel-slot 4-set to automatic speed and automatic topology, Version 1.0.3

Xserve RAID 3.5TB w/SFP port (copper)-the fibre channel on the Xraid is configured to automatic, drive caches and write caches are enabled, and read prefetch is set to 128 stripes., using journaled volume format, Apple Xserve RAID firmware-1.3.1-1.24.xfb

RAID 50 disc speeds
Beginning of disc: 189 reads, 192 writes
20% full 189 reads, 192writes
40% full 189 reads, 192 writes
60% full 189 reads, 191 writes
80% full 189 reads, 191 writes
up to last 80GB 189 reads, 191 writes

The same rough results were arrived at with RAID 0 configuration on Apple fibre channel, I didn't write them down, because they were pretty much the same.

XRAID w/ATTO FC

Dual 2.5 G5 (4gigs of RAM) OSX 10.3.7

Black Magic Pro (dual link) capture card-in slot 3

ATTO Celerity 22XH 2Gb-in slot 4-set to 2Gb/s speed, and automatic topology. Using ATTOCelerityFC Version 1.4.0, and ATTO ExpressPCIPlus 2.0.4 drivers.

Xserve RAID 3.5TB w/ LC adapter-the fibre channel on the Xraid is configured to automatic, drive caches and write caches are enabled, and read prefetch is set to 128 stripes., using journaled volume format using AppleXserveRAID firmware-1.3.1-1.24.xfb, and also newer version 1.3.8
(the LC adaptor allows for optical connection, this doesn't really boost performance, but protects against electromagnetic interference, and is needed to connect to the ATTO card)

RAID 0 disc speeds
Beginning of disc: 280 reads, 236 writes
20% full 280 reads, 236 writes
40% full 280 reads, 236 writes
60%full 280 reads, 236 writes
80% full 280 reads, 236 writes
up to last 80GB 280 reads, 236 writes

RAID 50 disc speeds
Beginning of disc: 280 reads, 199 writes
20% full 280 reads, 199 writes
40% full 280 reads, 199 writes
60% full 280 reads, 199 writes
80% full 280 reads, 199 writes
up to last 80GGB 280 reads, 199 writes

Now I'm sure that in most cases anyone with a budget would back up to tape, but since this is a student production, (with limited finances) all back up will be done to multiple separate fire wire drives. And that's the whole reason for circumventing the deck.

One thing to mention though is that without the use of a deck when you capture the time code will always start at 0. I have been told by BlackMagic to be able to capture, with time code, another 3rd party program, such as Virtual VTR, is needed to add the time-code to the footage. But other than that, this is a working direct capture solution for RAID 0, and definitely a working storage/work flow solution.

Also, one final fact. I did all of this again on my dual 1.8 PCI-X equip G5 and got exactly the same results. So really it seems what is needed is the PCI-X slots, (not to say processor speed isn't important), but the new 1.8's don't have PCI-X, so they probably aren't going to hold up(Mike's note - absolutely true - PCI-X is required for HD capture on BMD cards).

So here's an answer! Hope to hear many more, I can be reached at nwk204 [at] nyu [dot] edu for any details, and if you're in NYC in the fall, come to the NYU international film festival and check out "The Girl from Serrano" at Cantor Film Center at 36 E 8th St. And a big thanks to Mike for his incredible site!

---------------

end report

Thanks Nicholas for all your hard work on this and taking the time to write it all up! Reader Reports are always welcome.

-mike

Short version: I'm on two panels at SXSW Film Conference & Festival this year in Austin, TX. 11:30am Sunday March 13th, Film Blogging; Monday March 14th 11:30am-12:30, Future of Digital Filmmaking. You should come, even if you don't care to see me talk, it's worth it as an indie filmmaker working with digital.

Classic Mike Meandering Blog Version:

Mike Curtis (that's me) will be speaking about himself in the third person, and he wishes to stop doing so at once.

OK, one more try -

I'll be on two panels at the SXSW Film Conference this year, one on blogging, one on HD/Digital Moviemaking. If you haven't been to SXSW Film before, it's a GREAT film conference and festival - it's entirely indie centric, there's tons of other DIYers there (and if you aren't one you can find a passel of'em to help make your movie), and unlike Sundance or Cannes, 99% of the people are extremely approachable. One year when I was moderating the effects panel, I got to hang out with Kevin Todd Haug who'd just done VFX for Fight Club, and some honcho from Paramount or somesuch who talked about hanging out with Redford around a campfire talking about their grandkids. How cool is that? (The hanging out with these guys, not grandchild discussions.) Even as a non-panelist, Austin is such a laid back, no attitude place, it's no big deal to walk up and say hi to just about anybody (that doesn't have a coked up looking bodyguard standing next to them - beware the SXSW Music crowd! : ) Yes I'm totally kidding.)

Plus, it's a great film festival with lots of fun surprises. Guillermo Del Toro came down and screened Hellboy before the Suit Pimps in LA even got to see that finalized version. He came out and intro'd the film as he promised he'd do after screening Blade 2 there with Ron Perlman a couple of years before. Da Man promised, Da Man delivered. Awesome. I saw Memento there before it went big, and I'd have to look up a lot of others, but it's a great "see it here first" venue. Solid movies for a week, movie geek heaven! And with the exception of the big premieres, you can pretty much walk up to anything a half hour before and get in. Buy a badge and just wave it at'em on the way in. It's like a low key, laid back Cannes or Sundance, without the stuffy attitude or cold, and you can actually get into almost everything. But Clint won't be there. Deal with it.

OK, it's late and I'm wanderblogging.

So here's what I know so far:

Future of Film Blogs
Sunday, March 13 11:30am :
Are weblogs heralding a new age in media coverage of the craft and business of movies?

I don't have official information, so I'm SPECULATING, based on other listed speakers, that my fellow panelists MIGHT include:

David Hudson of GreenCine
Wiley Wiggins of News of the Dead (Wiley has been in a couple of Linklater films, as well others, and is another Austinite - he emailed me to confirm he'd be there and I had his link wrong...woops)
...and Harry Knowles, Founder, Ain't It Cool News - the Big King Daddy of film blogs. Long live the King! And yet another Austinite. Spot a trend here?

This should be fun. March 13th HD For Indies will be just a few days past it's first birthday. That first month, I think I might have had a few hundred pageviews a day. Today I've had 5800, and the day isn't over yet (thanks ya'all!). A year ago, I was Officially A Zero in the moviemaking world. Now I'm a Zero with an audience. Mom must be so proud. ; )

Pardon me, that's ego blogging, not what the panel is about. The panel will be about how blogs are used to talk about films, filmmaking, and the business side of makin' movies. The fact that you're reading this tells you how much things have changed in the past couple of years. Blogging has COMPLETELY enabled this kind of discourse - if I couldn't sit here fat 'n lazy on my super comfy couch and just click on a bookmark, click "New Post", type my wildly optimistic rantings and obsessively compulsive notes on the Secret Inner Lives of Disk Arrays, then click "Publish Post", there's no way in hell I'd take the time to hand code a website daily, with Google searchable tidy monthly archives, comment posting, etc.

Maybe the other panelists would (Harry Knowles certainly did, an acquaintance helped get it all set up before all the tools were this easy), but I certainly wouldn't.

These kinds of technologies are all about reducing transactional friction. The friction on my side is the hassle to get off my ass and publish this stuff, the friction on your side is the difficulty of finding this kind of information (either via Google, visiting the site, or the smarties out there using RSS...hint hint!) If I didn't publish this online, or if you had to go to a library or pay for me to physically mail dead trees to you, would you bother reading this? Probably not.

...and for the main event:

Future of Digital Film
Monday, March 14, 11:30 -12:30
Things are constantly changing for the face of digital technology in filmmaking. The experts will help explain what that means for you.

I'm not sure who the other panelists are besides me, but this should be a good one. Hopefully the panel won't be as overstuffed as last year's, so perhaps some real opinion slinging will get set loose - panels are MUCH more interesting when somebody leans up to a microphone and says "I'm sorry, (other speaker's name), I completely disagree, you CAN in fact accomplish X if you do Y..." Difference of opinion is what matters and why you're there. If you leave a digital panel still wondering whether to shoot on Varicam or F900, the panel sucked. (The panel didn't suck last year, it was just full and busy; I'm just saying in general, on panels, audience should get concrete information out of it. I like panels to have 4 or so panellists and a moderator for best audience usefulness.)

I'm hoping to get mention in of my DIY aesthetic's validity for indies (technically competent ones, anyway), and at least say the words SATA arrays, LCD monitoring, DeckLink HD/Kona2 cards, Final Touch HD, and data centric production and post production methodologies. And oh yeah! My new 10 bit, uncompressed to disk field recording solution. Latest number chugging - raw media costs (NOT including the unit itself!) for 10 bit, 4:2:2, 1920x1080 24 fps is right at $200/hr for fault tolerant storage (one drive in array fails, you don't lose any data). So better than HDCAM SR quality for a "tape" cost of $200/hr. HDCAM is about $60/hr, but is 8 (not 10) bit, 1440 (not 1920) pixels wide, and compressed (instead of uncompressed). Plus it includes monitoring, on set playback, can do multi-hour takes....blah blah blah so forth and so on. I hope to briefly mention it without being a dork and plugging my product too swinishly.

We'll only have an hour, so I'll have to be pithy and quick and concise.

Uh oh, in that case I'm screwed....

-mike

WARNING: Completely gratuitous, chest/ego pounding, self proclaiming personal blogging to follow:

OK, this breaks my usual rule against ego blogging, but due to overwhelming demand (apparently, I can overwhelmed by two emails) here's how the half marathon went:

1:53:52.5, which is an 8:41/mile pace. For 13.1 flippin' MILES. Egads, people.

106th out of 277 men 35-39 (I'm 36)

526th out of 3798 finishers

I've run halves as fast as a 7:37 pace in the past, but I was, like, in shape 'n stuff, OK? Back then.

Breakdown: I was in the 52.5% category for my age, so pretty much average (although I think I've run all of a dozen times since the last half I ran back in November).

I ran a 8:59/mile pace the first half, 8:26/mile second half - I ran with a 9 min/mile pace group until I was sure I wasn't overdoing it and going to pop a spleen on something on the second half, then sped up.

It was WARM for a marathon - the writeup on the RunTex site called it right -

Confucius say: A good day for marathon spectators is a bad day for marathoners.


Confucius was right too. Sunday was a picture perfect day—perfect for a day at the lake, a round of golf, a long bike ride, taking in a Longhorns baseball game or watching the 14th Freescale Austin Marathon.

But running Freescale? In a word (or three): Very, very tough. High humidity and a searing midwinter sun, made the 26.2-mile journey a character check, slowed times and made it a battle of attrition. Even some of the world’s best marathoners had problems with the 75-degree conditions and several notables stumbled--cramped, dehydrated and depleted--to the finish line at Auditorium Shores.


Did I mention it was pouring rain, Texas Doom Style, up until 30-40 minutes before the start? That I was hydroplaning on the drive up to the start? That three of us sat in the car for 10 minutes asaying "I ain't goin' out there!" until it abated to merely torrential? And the sun came out from behind the clouds around mile 6 or 7? 100% humidity. Literally.

But I felt I did OK - I ran in my usual fashion, best described by my running buddy's husband "Go Shirtless Mike!" Some people ran in tights. Fools I say! I don't do tights unless it's below 25 degrees at the start.

But props t